dixiblog

The phone rings. My cell…the call is coming in on my toll free number. (Yes. I have a toll free number. And it goes to my cell.) A client…the accounting department. Did I get their last payment? Uh, yeah.

She says it’s a “coutesy call.” Thanks me. I’m confused. Don’t you usually get one of those when you owe somebody money? She hangs up.

Thirty seconds later, the phone rings again. It’s now a boss person from the same company. She wants to talk about the “urgent” email she sent me eariler in the day. As in a few hours before the call. Now, I’d already dealt with the email and sent a response. She either hadn’t gotten my response or hadn’t checked yet. Ohhhhhhh.

I understand what they were doing, I think. I guess “clarifying” to me that they were paying me, and therefore, I should skip when I am told to skip. And if I’m told to skip urgently…well, I damn well better, huh?

These folks seldom ask for anything, by the way, and pay more than many of my clients for the nothing they ask for. So requests from them are usually high priority anyway and don’t need ALL CAPS declarations of brightly colored URGENTS to get service from me. Hell. Just asking for what you need is enough. You know? I mean, Geez.

It’s like it was a thinly veiled threat, you know? Better step it up, or they’ll quit paying me. And honestly, I was offended a little. I mean, they weren’t less than polite, but how many years do you have to work for somebody before they don’t feel the need to “remind” you of your duties, you know?

I’ve been threatened for not responding quickly enough before. Oddly enough, it usually is not the requests that I am the slowest on. It’s the ones they are most anxious over. Usually without cause. In this case, it was. But not to them, so I don’t say that.

I think they forget, I am a single person. What do they think I’m doing? “Oh, well, here’s an email from Client Anxious. I don’t really care about them. They’re anxious for this update to be done. Fuck them. They’re waiting 3.2 weeks for it. Bwahahha!”

Yeah. That’s the way I’ve run a successful business for the last 8+ years now. Mmmm hmmm. I just ignore my client requests. Then I just get the checks and no work!! I’m clever.

I think it was worse, however, when I had the client who pretty much battered the hell out of my schedule for two weeks solid, then gave me a Bath and Bodyworks Gift Certificate to thank me.

Not that part. The worse part was when they tried to angle that Certificate the next week into making the same kind of (unreasonable) demands. And asking me about the certificate again. Did I use it yet? (If you cared, you’d probably remember you’d already asked me that. Unless you just wanted to remind me of it again. You can’t buy my soul to have be be your web bitch unto enternity for fifty bucks, sister.)

I kinda got her back, though. I told her I bought stuff to help me sleep, because when my stress levels are INSANE, I have trouble sleeping.

I shouldn’t try to use guilt, I know. I am morally against it. But in this case, I kind of see it as bouncing the same guilt she fired at me back at her. She also didn’t ask me about it again.

It was also true. So there.

Yeah…I’m liking the idea of taking a different path more all the time…